


Powerful

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BuckyCap - Freeform, Gen, POV Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers de-serumed, Super Soldier Serum, Team, The Avengers as a team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve loses the advantages of the super-soldier serum. This is not a tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Powerful

The part that always amused Steve was how long it took anyone to realize what had happened. The beam of green light blasted him into a brick wall, knocking it down and the wind out of him, and... that was it. That was the beginning of the end of Steve Rogers as Captain America. And nobody noticed.

He wasn't shrunk back down to five-four, he didn't lose the muscle definition, he didn't lose the mass. He looked exactly the same, covered in brick dust and bruises and a little blood that was his because he'd been fighting hand-to-hand and hand-to-machine for the entire afternoon. He'd been tired before he'd gotten zapped, bone-deep tired because it had been hours of uninterrupted urban combat, and he was tired afterward. He had been sore before and there had been nothing in the serum that would have kept him from feeling going back-first into a brick wall at thirty miles an hour, so he was even more sore afterward. The battle continued and so did he until Iron Man and the Hulk took care of the last of the robots. He did his usual post-battle team management, more worried for Clint having fallen shoulder-first from a height than for himself, and then a quick press conference for the assembled media before everyone trudged back to the jet and collapsed out of view of the public.

Back at the Tower, he exhorted everyone to eat and sleep and hand in their AARs, in that order, and went back to his apartment to do the same. He woke up later than usual, but not that remarkably for the day after getting beaten to hell, and if he still felt like he'd been blasted into a brick wall the day before, well, he had been. He healed faster than a normal person, but he'd still be bruised and battered for another couple of days.

The first sign something was wrong was when he went running. He expected the soreness, the lactic acid buildup he'd been too tired and distracted to work out last night, but not to this extent. He'd fought hard the day before, but not to the limits of his endurance. And yet his body was telling him he had.

And then there was the speed -- or the lack thereof. He was running fast, but not his level of fast. He was passing other runners in Hudson River Park, but not like a race car, not like he usually did. And even this was making him sweat with exertion the way it never did.

He went back to the Tower at at trot and to his apartment. He stripped down and looked at himself in the mirror, as if there might be some visible explanation for what was going on, but there wasn't. He looked exactly as he expected to look. He took a shower, got dressed, and called Bruce.

"How's your super-soldier physiology?" he asked.

"I'm not that kind of doctor," Bruce reminded him by rote, because he wasn't, at least not by professional accreditation. But he was the foremost expert on Hulks and, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, super-soldiers were fruits of the same family tree and so Bruce knew more about it than the average MD. Why was why his next words were to ask him what was wrong.

It took less than twenty-four hours to realize what had happened. It took the better part of two weeks to determine that no, this probably wasn't temporary. He was no longer a super-soldier.

He took it better than anyone else, which did not actually make anyone else feel better. He didn't enjoy feeling like crap as his wounds healed at a slower pace. He didn't like how tired he was all the time. And he really didn't like the realization of how much he'd come to rely on his enhancements for everyday life. But as for the rest, Steve felt he could abide and, in a few ways he wasn't prepared to confess, he was honestly relieved. Being a super-soldier had kept him apart from people in ways that were not related to being Captain America and it had added to his loneliness even as he'd found a new family in the Avengers. He'd been a demi-god in a different way than Thor, although he'd never have phrased it as such out loud, and being able to feel -- and suffer and _age_ \-- like a normal person, like a mortal man, was a gift. It felt a little like he'd finally come home.

It was not a gift to Captain America, however, and what to do about that was the subject of much debate. Retiring outright had been a non-starter; Clint and Natasha and Sam fought without benefit of powers (or armor) and Steve's training and experience hadn't been sapped along with his strength. But staying with the team as Captain America would require an entirely new team strategy, would require emphasizing different tactics in practice and in the field, and would require Steve himself to re-learn his new body and commit to a training regimen far more involved than what he'd done as maintenance before.

"You are going to have to become a gym rat and like it," Clint told him wryly. "And let me tell you, if you think it's hard at what, thirty-one? You just double that for when you get a little closer to the big four-oh."

There was a bigger debate about what to do when it became public knowledge that Captain America was no longer a super-soldier. Steve did a lot of promotional and charitable work as Cap, using his strength and speed mostly for entertainment even when visiting military bases. Curtailing those activities would be noticeable, although Maria insisted that there were ways to get around turning them into a reveal. But, everyone agreed, eventually it was going to have to come out and nobody could agree what would come next. Steve's own opinion, that they should be honest about it, had supporters but was not popular. It would make him a target in the field, the objection went. But he was always a target in the field because he was the field commander and he didn't see that as something to worry about.

Their first mission out was less of a disaster than everyone had not-so-secretly anticipated. Steve had had time to train, to learn his new limitations if not necessarily get used to them, and the team had had practices expressly designed to re-orient their tactical instincts. Out in the field, it helped that it was mostly a shooting fight and Steve had been required to use the shield as a shield more than as a projectile weapon, although he could still throw it if he had to. (Tony had done testing to see how much thinner they could make the shield without adversely impacting its effectiveness. It was several ounces lighter now, easier to throw and still able to do damage.) There were no crazy stunts required, at least not by Captain America, and nothing worth reporting in the papers beyond the usual complaints about collateral damage.

Afterward, they all met at the Tower, cleaned and dried and "ready to celebrate not fucking up," as Tony put it. Steve enjoyed the buzz from his second beer, but stopped after that because he'd rather save his calories for dessert. His enhanced metabolism had left him constantly on the edge of being hungry and food had lost some of its enjoyment because it had more often been needed instead of wanted. Now there was alcohol that affected him and treats on cheat days and everyone thought he was crazy when he said that ice cream tasted better now.

He enjoyed other aspects of his new reality a bit less. He caught a cold, which had happened after he'd gotten the serum but had never made him as persistently miserable as this one did. "Manflu," Pepper called it, having no sympathy.

Things fell apart on the third mission, a HYDRA cell with some super-powered kids on their side whose primary objective had clearly been to take out Captain America. And they did, thoroughly. The Avengers won the day, but there would be no hiding that Steve wasn't what he'd once been.

"Doing the right thing, running toward danger to protect others, doesn't require super-anything," Steve told the media at the overflowing press conference a week later. He was still beaten to hell, his arm still slinged-up because his shoulder had gotten dislocated and the gash on his forehead was a sickly shade of green-yellow around the cut, but he'd had no hesitation about meeting the cameras. "I didn't do anything any fireman, any policeman, any soldier doesn't do on a daily basis and with far less attention and applause. Look to the heroes around you before you wonder about me."

As predicted, however, he became the primary target of their opponents in the field. Also as predicted, Steve didn't make it easy for them. It was a little like being with the Commandos, he thought to himself -- the bad guys focusing on taking him down and completely forgetting about the rest of the team. Which in turn made him miss Bucky all the more. He'd admitted to Sam that he'd hoped that his press conference would attract Bucky's attention, wherever he was now, and that maybe he'd reach out. They'd had no luck in tracking him and Steve had stopped running around the world trying months before his 'change,' but that didn't mean he wasn't desperate for knowledge of Bucky's whereabouts and safety. But Bucky stayed silent and absent.

Everyone else's interest, however, was piqued. Captain America, Everyman, turned out to be even more popular than the super-soldier version had been. The disassociation Steve had felt had maybe been mutual and his appearances now were a little less awe-filled and a little more fun. He lost the occasional footrace and arm-wrestle and it prompted a much more involved reaction than his easy victories once had. He'd stepped off of his pedestal and into everyone's heart.

Which meant that when Steve's run of success ended, when the bad guys were just a little too fast and a little too clever and a little too numerous and Captain America was taken down in the most public way possible, a high-caliber bullet to the chest on live television, it destroyed a nation. And very nearly the Avengers as well.

Steve was never clear on what happened over the following three months; he spent the first weeks in an induced coma and then too drugged up to be compos mentis enough to process much of anything. He saw Bucky at his bedside but assumed it was a dream because he'd also seen his mother sitting by his side, holding his hand and praying. He thought he heard Natasha doing the same, but when he asked during a lucid period, she gave him a look of such frank disbelief that he knew it had been true. And knew that he had to pretend that it hadn't been.

His awake-and-aware periods grew as the drugs were dialed back. His idea of pain management wasn't his medical team's idea of pain management, but his history of going against advice, medical and otherwise, was also well-documented and so he gladly exchanged a little comfort for a little clarity. Which was why he was awake and watching on television as the Avengers took on HYDRA in downtown Cleveland, Captain America in the middle of the fray. And why he thought he was maybe still a little too high to think clearly.

The uniform was different, but that didn't mean anything; he'd worn half a dozen variations since he'd come forward in time. The shield was the same, he thought, but it was hard to tell from the television. Whoever was wielding it knew what they were doing, but they didn't move as he had and weren't pretending to. This was a new Captain America and he wasn't sure how he felt about that. Not about there being a new one, fill-in or permanent, he was fine with that. Captain America was an ideal, not a pseudonym for Steve Rogers. He did not feel nearly as sanguine about the fact that nobody had told him or bothered to introduce the guy to him. He'd been able to carry on conversations for a couple of weeks, able to listen and remember for even longer, and this was something that should have come up before Tony's latest modifications to the armor or Sam's new girlfriend.

When he asked JARVIS the identity of the new Captain America, he was apologetically told that this was information JARVIS had been blocked from providing and would be given to him upon the team's return. Steve was frustrated, but knew better than to take it out either on the AI or the nurses who came to care for him, and instead watched the video in hopes of either recognizing a move or seeing his replacement without his cowl. He did neither, in part because he dozed off before the conclusion of the action. He was awake for longer stretches now, but he still spent most of his time asleep.

When he woke up again, it was to the scrape of a chair being pulled up to his bedside.

"Hi," Bucky said sheepishly. He was wearing the uniform still, but the cowl and shield were somewhere else.

"Fucker," Steve slurred, still not quite awake. The drugs made him groggy even when he was conscious.

Bucky chuffed out a humorless laugh and shrugged, not smiling and not helping Steve to sit up, either. The former bothered him a lot more than the latter. The whole thing bothered him a lot, though.

"I'm sorry," Bucky said, eyes on his hands in his own lap. "I wasn't ready. I'm not sure I'm ready now."

Steve was with-it enough to wonder why the hell Bucky was ready to join the Avengers and put on Captain America's uniform but not ready to see him. And he might've done it out loud because Bucky sighed.

"Wasn't my idea," he said. "You think I wanted to pretend to be a hero?"

"You go out there with the Avengers and save the world, or even just Cleveland, you're not pretending," Steve told him. "And you know that's not what I'm asking."

Bucky made a noise of frustration and despair and Steve had part of his answer.

"Go shower and change so you can stop hiding behind the uniform," he told Bucky, who looked up sharply because those had once been his words to Steve. "And you come right back here because I can't chase you, but I'm pretty sure everyone else will on my behalf."

If Bucky did come right back, Steve didn't know because he'd fallen asleep again. But Bucky did turn up the next day, in jeans and a shirt and the same half-fearful, half-miserable expression.

"Are you afraid I'm going to be angry or are you afraid I'm not?" Steve asked him.

"Both. Neither. I don't know," Bucky admitted. "I don't know why I'm here."

Which was closer to the truth than both of them would have wanted and it took a long time before there was an answer that either of them could accept. But in the meanwhile, Bucky stayed and Steve slowly improved and the others, who'd stopped hiding the minute Bucky had revealed himself, tried to be part of the solution and succeeded more than they failed.

The identity of the new Captain America remained a secret, despite what seemed to be a concerted effort to pull off his helmet in combat and Tony's and Clint's taking to calling him BuckyCap over comms. Steve got back on his feet and returned to the public eye, assuring everyone that he was doing well and enthusiastically supported his successor. He was vague about whether he'd resume his role once cleared for duty, hinting occasionally that that might never happen. Which in truth was yet to be determined, but no matter how much he missed the action -- and he did, never more so than when he sat in the Tower and watched the others -- he'd give it up forever without a second thought if it would keep Bucky near.

(Bucky was aware of this and both deeply unimpressed and even more deeply grateful.)

The Avengers grew in stature and size, accepting new members and new challenges and if Steve thought he could retire gracefully, he was quickly disabused of the notion. Bucky remained as Captain America in the field, but Steve was the one still effectively in charge of the Avengers even if Tony still signed the checks. He returned to action in a different uniform and his lighter shield -- Bucky used a newer one with the old weight -- and they called him Commander Rogers because it was Cap who was the one flinging himself and his shield into harm's way. Steve was finally what he'd never been during the war, the officer giving orders to his unit for them to carry out. He couldn't lead from the front anymore, but he could at least try to run alongside and that, he felt, was where he would have wanted to be all along.


End file.
